March 8, 2015 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – Over the last month Egypt has suffered a series of deadly bomb attacks, most of which have targeted civilian populations or vital infrastructure.

Declared a terrorist organization and banned by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood has gone underground and is believed to be responsible for much of this carnage. Over 500 of the Muslim Brothers have been tried, found guilty of capital crimes and sentenced to death. Though many of the verdicts are now undergoing judicial review, one high profile MB prisoner, Mahmoud Hassan Ramadan Abdel-Nabi, was recently executed.

Abdel-Nabi was captured with an al-Qaeda flag in his back pocket.

In response to the crackdown, some member of the MB have supposedly broken with the parent group and are now calling themselves the Dissident Muslim Brotherhood. How far-reaching this movement might be cannot be determined as of this writing, but if it represents an actual rejection of the Brotherhood’s revolutionary ideology, it must be seen as a significant development.

Over the last few days three members of the dissident group met with Al-Sisi and came away impressed, assuming they are telling the truth, a practice with which the Brotherhood is not generally associated.

“Speaking to the press following the meeting between Al-Sisi and Dissident Muslim Brothers, Tharwat Al-Kharbawi said those attending agreed that a reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood is unrealistic. Al-Kharbawi described the three-hour meeting as ‘an extraordinary meeting with an extraordinary man ...You can rest assured that Egypt is in good hands. But we all have to work together to ensure he is not left alone.’” [source, Amany Maged, Pressure points - As a terrorist bombing campaign worsens, the state and the Muslim Brotherhood are jockeying to position themselves, Al-Ahram]

Rebuffed by the Obama administration, a continuation of the regime’s odd affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt has sought out other partners to arm itself - as its military campaign against terrorists in Sinai and Libya quickens - and has consequently, inked an agreement with Vlad Putin to purchase the sophisticated weapons the nation requires.

All of these are good developments as far as the Al-Sisi government is concerned. With potential fissures appearing within Egypt’s most dangerous internal adversary and now with some assurance of the continued flow of arms to be used against an enemy which Al-Sisis has had the wisdom to note is motivated by Islam, the country can move forward.

End Note:

Of the linkage between terrorism and Islam, Al-Sisi observed the following at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, “…[the] “corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years” [are] “antagonizing the entire world…” [see, Raymond Ibrahim, Egypt’s Sisi: Islamic “Thinking” Is “Antagonizing the Entire World” , Islam Translated]